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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26154250">only the bravest girl</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak'>kimaracretak</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>How to Get Away with Murder</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Background Annalise Keating/Sam Keating, F/F, Infidelity, Season/Series 01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:27:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>863</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26154250</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/pseuds/kimaracretak</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Tonight, Michaela feels too real, too close, and all the parts of Annalise that want to be good want to tell Michaela to leave, go home, study for another class and prove that she's smart like that, too, because god knows someone in this house has to be.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Annalise Keating/Michaela Pratt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Flash Fuck Around 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>only the bravest girl</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElasticElla/gifts">ElasticElla</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>You took me on, you forced my hand again<br/>Holding the rope, holding everything<br/>Only the bravest girl would sit through this<br/>— 'The Void', IAMX</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Michaela's the last one left in the house - the last one downstairs, the last one that matters - and Annalise waits in the doorway, vodka martini chilly against her fingers. For Michaela to leave, or Michaela to notice her, or Michaela to do anything that might help her figure out which of the two she wants more.</p><p>"Sam got in an hour ago," she says. Quiet, experimental.</p><p>Michaela's eyes flicker up, fall back down to her papers, and she pulls the highlighter from her mouth, pink lipstick smudging shiny against the neon yellow barrel. It could be obscene, if she wanted it to be, but Annalise isn't sure she's even realised what she's doing. "I'm not done with the witness statements," she says, just as quiet but layered with a steel that seems out of place this late at night.</p><p>It's the sort of dedication Annalise wants - expects - from her students, but tonight, it doesn't feel like dedication. Tonight, Michaela feels too real, too close, and all the parts of Annalise that want to be good want to tell Michaela to leave, go home, study for another class and prove that she's smart like that, too, because god knows someone in this house has to be. </p><p>But the words stick in her throat, somewhere beneath all the things she shouldn't say, wants to say. She's good enough to keep them quiet, not good enough to say what she should, and the longer she watches Michaela watch her highlighter drag across crinkled paper, the more she begins to wonder when Michaela's going to notice.</p><p>Her martini is warm and still full by the time Michaela says, "If you want me to go, Professor Keating, you would have said so by now."</p><p>She's right, not that Annalise would tell her so. "I hope that's not the extent of critical thought you're applying to my case, Ms Pratt." </p><p>The papers hit the floor, loud in the lamplight, and Michaela swings her legs up into the space they leave behind on the couch. "Really?" She asks, and Annalise wonders if she's imagining the undercurrent of disappointment - she's said far worse, and Michaela's taken it all silently. But then she continues, "I have a fiance. You have a husband waiting upstairs for you. And we're both here, because we both know what that means."</p><p>Out of all of them it would be her. Annalise sets her glass down on a bookshelf that countless other glasses have already stained and turns her back on the stairs. It feels final, in a way that would make her laugh in another life - that she could move on from finding Sam's penis on a dead girl's phone, but Michaela Pratt, sitting on her couch on the wrong side of midnight, <em>that</em> was what she'd come to think of as the beginning of the end.</p><p>"You could have a normal life, you know." Sits down next to Michaela, hand on her knee. The grey fabric crumples under her hand, wool and silk.</p><p>"Being a mistress is normal." Her voice is steady; her hand slips under Annalise's to slide her skirt further up her thighs in invitation. "It's the only way I get everything I want and I <em>know</em> you want more than what you have upstairs. I know you need this too. I know it's the same."</p><p><em>Please</em>, she isn't saying, but Annalise reads in on her face as clear as anything. <em>Please tell me I'm right about you</em>.</p><p>She's said those exact words to plenty of students, but Michaela's too smart, too quick - she'll never be able to reassure her like that. "You love him," she says instead. "It's not the same thing at all."</p><p>She leans in before either of them can protest, covers Michaela's mouth with her own and kisses her too hard, with too many teeth. Annalise can feel Michaela smiling under her, feel where the cool skin of her thigh gives way to burning heat between her legs, and a good person would -</p><p>It doesn't matter what a good person would do. This is what she has now, Michaela making small hungry noises and canting her body toward Annalise just desperately enough that it shades into pathetic. Holding on tight enough to draw blood, tight like she's never letting go.</p><p>Annalise remembers that, more than anything else, later on - after the nights Michaela's spent kneeling under her desk with her hungry mouth learning new ways to be clever between Annalise's thighs; after the afternoons Michaela's spent in the first row of class, legs spread not quite wide enough to be obscene but wide enough still for Annalise to see the dark patch spreading across her underwear, always white or light blue or baby pink cotton for the best contrast. She remembers how good Michaela was at being in both of Annalise's lives, a central part of the one everyone saw and the only part of the one no one else saw.</p><p>And she looks at the space on her hardwood floor where there's no more blood, never was any blood, and she'll wonder why they couldn't survive without someone else standing between them.</p><p>Why Michaela didn't want them to.</p>
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